Bound for Hawaii

[AP photo] U.S. service members board a C-17 military cargo plane at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam on Thursday. The plane later took off for the journey to Hawaii.

©Associated Press

HAGATNA, Guam -- Leaving their crippled spy plane on a Chinese island, 24 U.S. crew members headed for Hawaii on Thursday with plans for a weekend reunion with families and friends on the U.S. mainland. Their long flight home ended a 12-day diplomatic standoff after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea.

Weeks of compromise had led American officials from expressions of "regret" to the word "sorry" during the weekend. Finally, a letter delivered to Chinese officials on Wednesday said the United States was "very sorry" for the pilot's death and for the U.S. plane's landing in China without permission.

With the carefully worded compromise, the United States avoided the full apology demanded by China, while the government-run Beijing Morning Post ran a banner headline Thursday reading: "The United States finally apologizes!"

U.S. and Chinese officials both warned the incident had not been settled. The U.S. plane, filled with high-tech, secret surveillance equipment, remained on Chinese soil, where experts have likely been taking it apart.

"This is not over," Secretary of State Colin Powell said amid meetings on the Balkans in Paris. "We still have our plane there. But this will all unfold in the days and weeks ahead."

[AP photo] U.S. crew members salute as they exit the Continental Airlines Flight 881 after arriving at Guam's Andersen Air Force Base on Thursday.

U.S. officials began debriefing the released crew almost immediately to find out how much of the plane's equipment and data they had been able to destroy.

During a stopover early Thursday at Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. territory of Guam, U.S. military families cheered as the crew members, led by pilot Lt. Shane Osborn, walked off a military-chartered Continental airliner and onto the tarmac -- their first contact with American soil. Some of the freed crew members leaned out bus windows to shake hands with onlookers before being driven away for a meal, showers and telephone calls to relatives.

"It gave me goosebumps. I just wanted to say, 'Welcome back. You guys are heroes,"' said Guam Gov. Carl Gutierrez, on hand for the first leg of the homecoming.

"I'm very pleased they are back on American soil," Powell said from Paris.

The crew left for Honolulu aboard a military C-17 about 5 a.m. EDT. They were expected to stay in Hawaii for two days of military interviews and briefings before a homecoming celebration planned for Saturday afternoon at Whidbey Island, Wash., their home base.

Across the United States, relieved relatives and friends watched television broadcasts showing the crew leaving China and arriving in Guam.

Mary Mercado, wife of aviation electronics technician Ramon Mercado, said her "heart was racing" as the plane took off from China's Hainan Island, where the 24 Americans had been detained since April 1.

"I've had butterflies in my stomach since this morning," she said from Oak Harbor, Wash. "We're just happy they're alive and coming home safely."

Cheryl Bensing of Taylorsville, Utah, whose son, Richard Bensing, is among the crew, stayed up early Thursday to watch the plane touched down in Guam.

"I don't ever want to have to do this again," she said.

The crew had been held since a collision with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea forced them to take their Navy EP-3E surveillance plane in for an emergency landing. The collision shattered the tail fin of the Chinese fighter, which spiraled out of control, Chinese state media said. The pilot, Wang Wei, is missing and presumed dead.

[AP photo] Some of the detained spy plane crew members pose with crew members of a Continental airliner before their departure for Guam.

The letter delivered Wednesday to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and later released by the White House said Washington is "very sorry the entering of China's airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance."

"Please convey to the Chinese people and to the family of pilot Wang Wei that we are very sorry for their loss," the letter said.

It also expressed appreciation for "China's efforts to see to the well-being" of the U.S. crew.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said Thursday that Beijing still held the United States entirely responsible for the collision and was keeping the spy plane for investigation. The two sides agreed to resume talks on the issue on April 18.

"We hope that the U.S. side will adopt a serious attitude toward China's standpoint on the incident and handle it properly," Chinese President Jiang Zemin said while in Brazil on a 12-day tour of Latin America, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Chinese officials have denounced U.S. surveillance flights as a violation of national sovereignty, but U.S. officials responded that there were no plans to end the practice of flying spy planes in international airspace near China.

American officials assume Chinese experts have stripped the craft of its sophisticated surveillance equipment. Satellite photos showed trucks lined up next to the plane on the tarmac of the Chinese air base in Lingshui, where it made the emergency landing. The Pentagon has said the crew destroyed as much of the top-secret codes and intelligence as they could before the Chinese came aboard.

Asked about the U.S. position on surveillance flights, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said Thursday that China "urges the U.S. side to make convincing explanation to the Chinese people, stop sending airplanes off China's coast to conduct reconnaissance activity and take effective measures to prevent such things from happening again."

With Jiang in Latin America throughout much of the crisis, it wasn't immediately clear who in the Chinese government was managing the situation, who had a say in deciding to release the crew, or to what extent the Chinese military was involved.

The Cold War-style dispute inflamed tensions over an expected U.S. decision this month on arms sales to Taiwan, which China claims as its territory; the detention in China of several U.S.-based scholars; and the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, for which American officials apologized unconditionally.

Despite their differences, the two countries are bound by hundreds of billions of dollars in trade. China wants U.S. support to join the World Trade Organization this year and to win its bid to host the 2008 Olympics. Officials on both sides said they want to make sure the incident doesn't damage long-term relations.

[AP photo] A C-17 military cargo plane carrying U.S. service members lifts off from Andersen Air Force Base.

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